The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,21

angry-looking peacocks. The strange thing was that the peacocks seemed to be dancing over an old-fashioned record player, the kind people had to crank before the music came out through an attached funnel-thing. Above the first door was a sign that read:

A second sign, above the second door, read:

And then the third sign read:

“Okay, that’s not comforting,” I said. “Besides being rude.”

“That third one doesn’t even rhyme,” Tuntuni sniffed.

“Perhaps we should attempt to turn the doorknobs regardless,” Bunty said.

It was hard to do, since they were so small. Neither Bunty nor I could grab on to the tiny doorknobs, but when Tuni tried to turn them with his beak, they didn’t move at all.

“Locked, all of them!” announced the little yellow bird, landing on one of the road-sign arrows in an overly dramatic way. “I told you, we’re never getting to New Jersey, no matter what these arrows say. Besides which, we’re probably going to die.”

“Not like we could have fit through them if they were open anyway,” I replied, studying the signs again. “So where are the three keys the poem’s talking about?”

“A pointless distraction! It’s just a trick to keep us from realizing the fact that we’re going starve to death in this room!” Tuntuni grabbed at his throat with his wings and gasped dramatically. “How long have we been down here anyway? How long since we’ve eaten? A week? A month? Not a year? The days are blending into each other! I have no sense of time anymore!”

I patted the panicky bird on his feathered head. “We’ve been down here about five minutes, dude.”

Bunty ignored Tuni and instead turned their big head toward me. “There is of course the possibility of there being a smallness potion somewhere in this room. That would be narratively consistent with the original tale.”

Tiktiki One just sat there wetly on the tile floor, swiveling its eyes and sticking out its tongue. Wait a minute, the lizard was actually sticking out its tongue at something! Something important!

“Thanks, Tiktiki!” I held up a small purple bottle that the gecko had pointed out. In broad, elaborate handwriting, it said Slug Me! “This must be the smallness potion!”

“Slug? A rather uncouth turn of phrase!” sniffed Bunty. “Bit of a lowbrow wormhole, this.”

“Give it here! Give it here!” shouted Tuni. “I’m about to die of dehydration!”

“Wait, Tuni!” I snatched the bottle back from the frantic bird. “What if it doesn’t work the way we want it to?”

“What choice do we have?” argued Bunty. “You do want to make it through the wormhole to New Jersey, don’t you?”

“You’re right.” I uncorked the bottle, wrinkling my nose at the smell. “Well, here goes nothing!” I said, and took a quick gulp before passing the bottle on to Tuni, Tiktiki One, and, finally, the tiger.

Only, I was right. The magic potion didn’t exactly work the way I was expecting. Because, even though I grew smaller, but still me-shaped, as soon as they drank from the bottle, the tiger, bird, and lizard transformed into small gold keys that clattered noisily onto the tile floor.

“Whoa! What the … ?” I let out a frustrated breath. “Bunty! I told you it might not work right!”

The key that used to be Bunty said nothing in reply. And neither did the other keys. Because of course they couldn’t in their current state. Lacking mouths and whatnot.

“Well, I did ask for three keys, I guess,” I sighed.

The three keys on the floor bounced and jiggled, as if the animals were impatient for me to get going with solving the riddle. I picked them up in my hands and saw that one had a little tiger shape on the top, the other a little bird shape, and the third a little lizard shape. “Okay, guys, any of you got any bright ideas about how I’m supposed to solve this one now?”

When the keys just lay there in my palm, I took it for a no. “All right, I guess I’m on my own, then.”

I reread the signs above the doors yet again. Well, at least the first one. The second two were downright insulting, and I didn’t really need the negativity right now.

“Okay, so I’ve just got to figure out how many tries max I’d need to find the right key for each of the doors,” I murmured to myself, looking carefully at each key and then each keyhole. But there weren’t any identifying marks on the doors, like little tiger-, bird-, and lizard-shaped keyholes. Noooo, that